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Dr. G., Psychologist

Category: Parenting

Satisfied Customers: 1467

Experience: Licensed Psychologist in the state of Minnesota

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My wife and I are raising my 13 y.o. nephew named Randy. He

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My wife and I are raising my 13 y.o. nephew named Randy. He came to live with us when he was 6 because his Mom and Dad became addicted to meth. His Dad lost his job after a car accident and eventually started cooking it and selling it. His Mom was eventually arrested and then completed a rehab program. She went to work for that program after she graduated. She eventually worked her way up to assistant director of that program. She is now working on trying to go back to college to get her couseling degree. She has also been very involved in Randy's life for the past 5-6 years. However, Randy has only seen his Dad 1 time in the 7 years he has lived with us. Randy loves sports and has great leadership potential. But, in the classroom is lazy. He has gotten in trouble numerous times over the years in school for lying to us about his grades. He has also been caught stealing other kid's papers and putting his name on it or printing other student's papers to turn in instead of doing the work himself. And, it is progressively getting worse each year. I am a Physical Therapist and my wife is a nurse. We have provided him a very structured, loving, and stable home for the past 7 years but, he seems to be getting worse at school instead of better. What else can we do?

He is to come home, have a snack if he is hungry, finish his chores ( that should only take him 15-20 min to do if he didn't finish them before school), then do his homework. My wife is usually home when he gets home about 3:30pm. Her shift is done at 3:00pm. then, if he gets his homework done, he can go play until dinner at around 6:00pm.

But, much of the time when we ask him if he has any homework he tells us "no" or "I finished it at school". Then, we find out later that he either didn't do it, or he did very poorly on it, or that he stole someone elses paper or copied someone elses paper because he was too lazy to do the work himself. We have now met with the principal and his teachers several times and have a plan in place to close the gap so he has no wiggle room to lie. But, now I'm having trouble getting the teachers to do their part.

It is always a struggle to get the teachers to hold up their end; and rightfully so. I like the plan in place at home. I always say no play time until homework is complete. You have fallen into the trap of buying into the lies that there is no homework. I see it all the time with parents. You want to be able to trust your child and take him at his word when he says there is no homework but unfortunately he has abused this freedom. Fortunately, teachers post homework online these days and communicating with teachers via email makes it more difficult for the child to lie. SO....................your main objective is to keep close communication with the teachers. Keep on top of missing assignments and no fun time until he is all caught up. Now the grand finale.......I tell parents that part of the homework process is that the child needs to show their daily planner/agenda that has all homework assignments written in it as part of the homework process. THEN, he needs to show all work that has been completed before he is allowed to resume with fun activities. So if he did it in school then great. But I want to see it before fun time begins. Don't bring it home? Sorry but I can;t trust that you are telling me the truth so no fun time. Believe me if you stick to this then he should come around pretty quick.

Thanks for your confirmation. That is exactly what we are currently doing. the problem is that we have a very slow computer (and maybe a computer virus) so it is very difficult and time consuming to get online to check his grades every day. However, his teachers have all been given our cell #'s and are to call us and give us a heads up if and when they see that he has done poorly on an assignment. They are also supposed to send home his graded papers or copies of the graded papers for us to go over with him ASAP. And, this is what is not happening. I am getting ready to go to the school and have another chat with his English teacher as randy rec'd a "D" and a "C-" on two homework assignments a week ago and we have heard nothing from this teacher.

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